


A Darling Shade of Red

by Allara



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Dark Claude von Riegan, Drabble, F/M, Hurt No Comfort, Post-Time Skip, Spoilers for Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), but he’s still soft for El, kind of, verdant wind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 10:08:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29276718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allara/pseuds/Allara
Summary: He was in love with dangerous things.
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 6
Kudos: 28





	A Darling Shade of Red

He was in love with dangerous things. 

At least, that’s what his mother warned him throughout the younger years of his life. 

Claude was his father’s son after all; though he was very much his own being born of the crossing of borders, his blood was still the ghost of two distinct people, two lines. One of those people happened to be a reckless man with a penchant for the blood-thrumming taste of adrenaline--and for that fact alone it was easy to see why Claude’s father was terribly in love with his wife. 

It seemed that impulse was gene-coded. And so, Claude was in love with dangerous things. 

“Just like the king,” his mother always told him, with something not quite a sigh but not quite approval in her voice. She was rarely pleased, Claude quickly found, as though the world never met the measure of her hopes. 

It had been years since he had last seen his mother and her cold eyes cut from jade. But there was one thing his blood coded from his mother, however: an inherit cleverness. And he was clever enough to know his mother was almost always correct despite her ire with the world, though her truth was rarely fair. 

So he supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised to fall in love with his own lady of icy eyes. 

The first time he had crossed the maw-like border of Fódlan and Almyra was the first time he had wandered such tall mountains. He recalled clearly the proud purple thistle blossoms that grew in the pine forests hugging those peaks. As though possessed upon seeing one, he had reached out to pluck it from its stalk, only to draw his hand back with a sharp breath and with the ruby beads of blood on his fingers. Edelgard’s eyes reminded him of those thistle blossoms, proud and strict. They were fierce, daring; and for a man who chased for things that most certainly would kill him, he was enamored. 

He should have expected as much, truly. 

But he also should have expected such a dangerous thing as her to grip the coals of revolution with her bare hands, calling upon all hell to purge a continent he was still becoming acquainted with. 

When the first shrills of war began under the command of her name, he could have laughed were it not for the levity of it all. It was rather predictable. 

He could have laughed again from a punctuating thought after hearing of war breaking loose: and it was of the fact that he was still very much in love with her. Even as eager flames licked at every combustible part of the monastery, and his body screamed with exhaustion and the suffocating sense that his dreams were quickly being wrangled farther from his reach, he still loved her. 

And he still did now, half a decade later, when they were acquainted once more as he stalked the long, embellished carpet that led to the Emperor standing before her throne. She was something ethereal in bronze and red, and if it weren’t for the undulating jaws of her gruesome axe he could have fooled himself into believing she was merely a statue. 

The climb up the stairs was a lifetime, and only a breath. He stopped at the final landing below her. Her eyes were pale and piercing in the heavenly light streaming through the looming throne room windows, and if Claude were a wiser man he might have shivered in trepidation. 

_ Like thistle blossoms. _

“You never did know when to back down,” she told him. 

Claude tossed her a sharp grin. “Harsh words from an emperor cornered in her own capital.”

Her hands tightened around the grip of her axe, and Claude’s own fingers twitched for the bow on his back. 

“I understand that our goals are much the same. But that does not mean I will relinquish Fódlan to you. You cannot understand the depth of suffering that lies beneath its proud exterior.”

“That may be true,” he admitted. “There is much I have yet to learn. But that doesn’t mean I’m so naive to think that burning a continent to the ground will cleanse it.”

“Do not assume you know my intentions,” was her cool response. 

“I don’t,” Claude relented, taking a brazen step forward until the toe of his boot met the first step. She drew herself taller as he began to ascend the last flight slowly towards her. “But you’ve left a bloody enough trail in your wake to get an idea.”

Claude had hardly arrived at the same landing as her when she arced her axe at him, quicker than a blinking eye. He reached for his own silver axe at his hip, bringing it up in time to catch her blade with the handle of his own. The impact reverberated through his marrow up to his jaw. 

He glanced up to meet her eyes and the churning fury within them. But deep beneath the coals was something more ashen, closer to the shade of grief.

“Give up and surrender, Edelgard,” Claude demanded. “Your death would be nothing but a waste in the end.”

She answered by hefting Aymr free, swinging its pummel upwards towards his jaw. Claude leapt away, groping with his heel to find where the floor ended behind him. She charged once more, hardly allowing him the chance to breathe. Their axes locked once more, and Claude teetered at the edge of the landing. 

“Edelgard,” he insisted again. She merely pressed her weight into their crossed blades, forcing Claude to take a clumsy step back until his foot found purchase on the first step. Using the newfound leverage, he shoved her away--though the attempt hardly made her falter. But it was enough to regain ground, and he battled her closer to the throne. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you fight so seriously,” Edelgard noted through her teeth. 

“Maybe all I need is some motivation,” he winked, grunting as they clashed, swung, parried, repeated. 

It was like a deadly waltz, Claude realized, and he could almost feel the tri-beat hum of dance in their battle. He wondered if she was also recalling that golden night of the monastery ball when they were mere teenagers with a near-flagrant infatuation with each other. She had led him through a waltz that was entirely alien to him--and the old motion of whirling around each other made an old nostalgia settle in his chest.

“Some things never change, huh?”

She didn’t deign to inquire what things, but he offered an answer regardless.

“You had to lead poor, clueless me through that dance then just like you are now.”

“This isn’t some waltz,” she reminded him, twirling from the reach of his axe. 

They paused to regain their bearings, circling each other like prey. Claude flashed a smile at her, relishing the way her eyebrows lowered and that familiar crease between her brows deepened. 

“Not exactly,” he agreed. “But close enough.”

She brought her axe over her head, and he stopped it with the handle of his axe again--his arms trembled under the brunt of her strength and from his own exhaustion. The pale wisps of her hair fluttered from his breath fanning over her face, framing her steely glare.

“I still wish I had kissed you that night. It’s one of my biggest regrets--and I don’t have many of them.”

That made her falter, the flame in her eyes waning ever so slightly. She had hardly parted her lips to speak when he twisted their axes, wrenching hers from her hands and sending it clattering across the marble until it collided with the foot of her gilded throne. 

Claude dropped his own weapon, instead gripping her wrists when her hands flew for the dagger at her waist. He allowed gravity to bring them both to a kneel, using his weight to pin her hands to the ground. 

“Claude,” she warned, her tone low and deadly. He could feel the flex of her hands even through her gauntlets. When he lifted his head to peer at her, he was near enough to see the flecks of gray within her lilac eyes. 

“I don’t want to kill you, Edelgard,” Claude told her softly.

“Surely you have the resolve.”

Claude shook his head weakly. “If it were anyone else, maybe.”

They both knew she was strong enough to fight him off in an instant if she wished--yet she made no move to do so. Behind the hardened gem of her gaze was something whimsical, familiar. It hurt to look at. 

“Edelgard...”

“Don’t waste your breath, Claude. We both know how this will end.”

“Neither of us have been ones to follow what’s expected of us,” he countered, allowing a note of desperation in his tone. “Why do so now?”

“My path is one I’ve chained myself to. I cannot turn things back now.”

Something genuine burned in his throat, and he tightened his hold around her wrists. He could hardly feel the heat of her body past his gloves and the hardened layers of armor. Despite the ever-hanging threat of the dagger sheathed on her hip, he dipped his head to press his forehead to hers. She tensed in his hands, suspicious of his every move. 

“And there’s nothing I can do to convince you otherwise?”

She was ice in his palms, bitingly cold and unwelcoming. But he could feel her melting near-imperceptibly in the way she slackened slightly against him. Still, a weakened statue was still stone through and through, stubborn despite the eroding forces eating away at it. 

“No.”

Her tone was gentle, and he wished it wasn’t. It would have been easier if she had torn herself from his grasp and shouted at him, reclaiming her spiny axe left at the foot of her throne and aiming it at his neck. Perhaps that way he could finally muster the fury to hate her. But even his blood knew he never truly could. 

Instead she was still crouched with him on the floor of her throne room. She lifted her face minutely until her nose brushed against his, and he shivered. She was gentle, almost, in the peculiar way only a dangerous thing could manage. 

He matched her gaze, pressing his mouth into a tight line before parting it with a strained breath. She was resolute, ever set in stone, but he could almost see the apology beneath the bitter armor of her façade. 

Though it was part of the plan--the scheme, he knew he was acting primarily on impulse when tilted his chin forward to chase her lips. But his own lips brushed against the ruddied skin of her cheek where he had expected her mouth. He froze, eyes opening enough to peer at the way she had turned her head from him. 

“A sedative. Really, Claude?”

And perhaps he was just as predictable as her. The toxin on his lips seemed to sear his skin, though he knew very well that he had long since built an immunity to it. 

Even caught in his last-resort attempt to subdue her without bloodshed, he trailed a light kiss to her jaw. His throat ached with the telltale signs of tears--he couldn’t remember the last time he had come anywhere near to crying. 

Edelgard sighed, a wistful, tired sound, and he pressed his face into the junction where her shoulder met her neck. The lines of her armor dug into the flesh of his face, but he didn’t have the mind to care. 

“Our paths aren’t easy ones,” she told him. “Nor can they exist together.”

Claude slowly released one of her hands to find the ornate dagger at her side, fingers pausing at the hardened line of her waist before settling around the handle. He released an empty huff of a laugh.

“It’s time for you to find the courage to walk your own without me.”

“I’ve always been a bit of a coward,” he countered, voice devoid of the deceptively warm charm it usually held. 

He felt her shake her head slightly against his. 

There was a sigh of steel against steel.

“Not you. Never you.”

It was predictable, really. He knew how the day would end from the start despite his preemptive scheming: the sun setting on the Emperor bathed crimson from her own blood--nearly the same color as her empire’s banner. 

The night ended as he grimly expected it, with the sun setting over an old, war-wearied world. Morning brought a new dawn rising upon a stirring world, and upon a dangerous, golden king with hands stained a darling shade of red. 

  
  
  



End file.
